vanessa barbara

"Bellotto has no trouble discovering dark doings...São Paulo's size and diversity give this volume's 14 storytellers room to roam...In the year of #MeToo, Bellotto's Akashic entry has a timely feel, giving noir a host of feminine faces."
--Kirkus Reviews

"São Paulo Noir might be the strongest entry yet in the long-running and globe-spanning Akashic Noir series. Editor Tony Bellotto clearly has the Midas touch when it comes to selecting stories. São Paulo Noir excelled."
--San Francisco Book Review

Praise for editor Tony Bellotto:

"Undoubtedly, if Marlowe and Harry Bosch are Los Angeles, Matt Scudder is New York and Maigret, Paris, the detective Remo Bellini is São Paulo's most complete translation."
--O Globo

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. On the heels of Rio Noir, beloved Brazilian rock star and best-selling novelist Tony Bellotto ushers another world-class city into the Akashic Noir Series.

Brand-new stories by: Tony Bellotto, Olivia Maia, Marcelino Freire, Beatriz Bracher & Maria S. Carvalhosa, Fernando Bonassi, Marcelo Rubens Paiva, Marçal Aquino, Jô Soares, Mario Prata, Ferréz, Vanessa Barbara, Ilana Casoy, and Drauzio Varella.

From the introduction by Tony Bellotto:

Encyclopedias will say that São Paulo is the main financial, corporate, and commercial center of South America. The census will show that São Paulo is the most populous city in Brazil, the Americas, the Portuguese-speaking world, and the entire Southern Hemisphere...Scholars will inform us that São Paulo is the most multicultural city in Brazil, having received, since 1870, millions of immigrants from every part of the planet, and that it is the city with the largest populations of people of Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish, and Arab origin outside their respective countries...Experts will assure us that São Paulo has a high crime rate. Sociologists will confirm that the city has an area known as Cracolândia (Crackland) and that among the violent and neglected communities spread along its periphery, one bears the ironic name Paraisópolis (Paradise City). Politicians will roar that São Paulo is the engine that drives Brazil...

More than historians and sociologists, writers have always been able to transform cities into great characters. This is the way we decipher devouring sphinxes.